


for better or for worse

by vegetas



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 15:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4881544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegetas/pseuds/vegetas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>as the fifteenth anniversary of the narada incident approaches, bones finds himself face to face with the prospect of seeing pavel for the first time in three years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for better or for worse

**Author's Note:**

> for audrey, who wanted something sad and indulges my rambling about this paring that has ruined my life.

__  
we said goodbye with a highball  
then i got as high as a steeple,  
but we were intelligent people:  
no tears, no fuss.  
  
hooray for us.  
  
thanks for the memory // harry nilsson

 

* * *

 

 

“We don’t want it to feel…inappropriate.”

Bones stared at the slightly shimmering faces of the people on the screen. He could sense the deep discomfort emanating from each face in its respective modular frame like a pulse.

“Am I the only one who remembers it’s been three years?” he said, his hand going to the back of his head, petting the hair down. The anxiety of the room ratcheted up, and he cleared his throat to break it. “It’s not like he and I haven’t ever attended one of these before. Hell, I’ve watched him speak ten times since…” he leaned back into his chair, drumming his fingers on the arms.

“Never in the same hour, Bones.”

Bones didn’t look at Jim’s face, or any of them, frankly. His head tipped forward for a moment and his fingers pinched the bridge of his nose right between his eyes. 

“You’re making something out of all this that isn’t there, and if anything’s inappropriate, well,” he replied, rankled. “This has nothing to do with him or I and making it about us is…” he waved his hand in the air in front of him.

“Disrespectful,” Spock offered. Uhura took a stip of something she was drinking and Jim continued staring at Bones as though he were about to shatter into thousands of pieces.

“Exactly.” Bones agreed.   

\--

The fifteen year anniversary of the Narada Incident, my God.

Bones stared at the telescreen long after it had faded to black. His reflection looked flatly back at him, eyes tired. He rubbed his forehead again, but it didn’t help the headache he was nursing in the slightest. His palm dragged roughly over his stubble.

The screen flashed, as if on cue, and Bones sighed.

“Ignore,” he said plainly, and the dialogue box loudly proclaiming ‘James T. Kirk’ dissolved. If there was anything that he knew he _shouldn’t_ be doing it was talking about any of this with Jim. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the dogged concern, but the conversations always came with a cloying sense of guilt and Bones was beginning to grow weary of accepting Jim’s apologies.

As if he and Pavel weren’t perfectly capable of methodically and systematically destroying their relationship all on their own...  
  
 He rose and pushed the chair back towards the desk, leaving his office entirely. Jim was likely to call back several more times before he got the hint and he wasn’t about to drive himself crazy delaying the inevitable.

He imagined the conversation that they must have had with Pavel, though Pavel had probably gone to them first it. He was too polite not to, unlike Bones who let it fester for weeks in silence before they worked up the courage to ambush his opinions out of him.

He indulged the nagging, bitter, curiosity for a few minutes as he assembled some drink for himself, barely paying attention to it. Maybe he’d throw a few back and then call Jim, who would be too eager to tell him how it had all unfolded.

How Pavel had told them there wasn’t anything to be worried about. Just how many times could he reiterate his respect for Leonard, for his work. That he appreciated how supportive they’d all been during the divorce, as always, but it was over now and their concern was unnecessary.

Bones drank standing at his kitchen counter, staring at nothing. 

In the end, they’d called anyway because neither he nor Pavel were able to make it apparently clear.  

It had all been long decided, hunched over the conference table of their Lawyer’s office on an overcast Monday morning. Both of them had agreed that it was all finalized and neatly put away; all the money given up and the art, and the furniture and bullshit they’d accumulated without too much of a fight. The house sold, insurance sorted out. No more messages on his PADD about dining room tables or rugs or account numbers or pleas to call so-and-so about something.  

He reached the end of his drink, the ice clinking gently against his teeth.

His memory licked at the raw places, the shameful moments that he couldn’t apologize for. They’d put on a beautiful show as it all went to hell, testing the limits of how cruel you could be when you couldn’t love someone anymore.

Bones with the drinking and the work and the ego. The refusal to change, because why should he have to when he had been that way for longer than Pavel had even been alive. How he’d set about pulling it apart with a surgeon’s precision and cauterized every vein rather than end up humiliated and derelict in some far old age.

And Pasha, with so much stupid hope, with so much frustration because he couldn’t make it work. Pasha, who believed he was owed something. Pasha, who was let down, and Pasha, who woke up one morning and realized he was neglected and the one person who was supposed to mend it had no intention of doing so.

He looked down the hall towards his small living room and, though it wasn’t the same hallway, he could still imagine Pavel so perfectly. Still holding the bottle in one hand, still wiping his eyes over and over with the other, still shouting that he refused to give Bones the pleasure of “being an animal about it”. He wouldn’t be his ex-wife with all the vulgarity and petty spite but oh, how he understood her now when he never had before. He’d sobbed out a laugh as he said thank God _they_ never had any children because what a disaster that would have been.

Pavel had been so true to his word, and Bones had gone quietly. They’d patted themselves on the back. Nobody had even been too inconvenienced, and what a relief.

The last time he’d seen him Pavel was sitting silently across from him. He signed the papers without hesitating and set the pen neatly aside. There was only this left, this legacy of misunderstanding stretched over a few sheets of paper; a whole life rifled through and appraised and measured and divided.

There had been a time where Bones believed that would be impossible; that they had been something you could not ascribe value to because a big enough number did not exist. Even the valley of their age was not so wide because what filled it was more than enough.  

But he had been wrong about that.

Pavel watched him as he signed with wide eyed disbelief; the kind of surreal naked shock someone feels only when they have loved someone for so long and have no idea when they stopped.

Later, at the bar, when he’d told the bartender about how his husband had only been a year older than him after his first divorce, she had sympathetically asked him what he had done after something like that.

“I joined Star Fleet,” Bones had replied, swallowing what she had set in front of him. “But he’s already done that.”

\--

The night before the memorial dinner he couldn’t sleep at all. He kept dreaming of explosions and red lights and laying his hands on people he could not help.

He lay awake for a long while, until the sun slivered underneath the heavy curtains over the window. He wished Jim would come knock on the door to share in his misery, but it remained quiet and still and there was no stir from the hotel room next door.

He rolled to his side and wondered if Pavel was awake. If he still craved olives in the middle of the night.

How many times had he caught him, Bones thought. He hadn’t thought of that in so long – he had nearly forgotten about the strange little habit.

Pasha, bathed in the white light of the refrigerator eating green olives from the jar and licking the salt from his fingers. How guilty and sweet he would look when he saw Bones standing there watching, how apologetic he would be that Bones had come to find him when he found he was gone. Shooing them both back to bed. A kiss before he laid down again. He’d say something sweet in the swimmy moments before Bones fell back into sleep…thank you and I do love you. Please sleep, it’s alright, I won’t be lonely...

How could someone forget something so dear?

He had gotten up each time he woke and found him gone.  

Every time. Countless times.

\--

Pavel kept rubbing his fingers together.

It was the cocktail hour before the official dinner. Really, it was an excuse for the press to get their hands on Jim and Spock and Uhura before they were denied any access, unless their publications were sponsors of the charity. Bones had turned away from the bar and directly across from him, towards the very far corner of the lobby, was Pavel.

He was wearing the same charcoal dress uniform as the rest of them, though it had never suited him. He carried his cap tucked under one arm, the tips of his fingers rubbing together over and over. He was listening intently to Sulu, and to his side a taller man stood, his hand resting on the small of Pavel’s back.

Yaser, Bones remembered. The chemist.

He was slender, like Pavel, but at least two inches taller and had thick black hair slicked against his head and a five o’clock shadow that seemed to darken within the minute. He bent and said something to Pavel who nodded; he must have excused himself because he then turned and waded through the crowd towards the opposite end of the building.

When Bones returned his eyes to Pavel, he was staring straight at him. It was excruciating; he cursed himself for being such a fucking idiot because he had _meant_ to avoid this. He was purposefully _not_ going to do this, but here he was with his pants down and Pavel was sure to think he was doing something like nitpicking Yaser’s posture, or trying to guess his weight, or, most despicably, diagnose him from fifty feet away.

But, to his shock Pavel didn’t look offended; he only looked nervous. Sulu turned over his shoulder and Bones nearly closed his eyes in mortification, but Sulu’s eye were sympathetic when they came to him. He smiled hopelessly, and Bones knew immediately that he was about to leave them both stranded.

But that was only fair; after all, they had all reassured themselves silly that there was nothing to be worried about. There was no need for anyone to get in the middle of it.

Sulu said something to Pavel, Pavel implored him. Sulu looked back at Bones.

“Fuck,” said Bones, turning back to the bar. He grabbed the first drink he saw and threw it back, the bartender staring at him with disgust. “Jesus,” he spit, wiping his mouth with his cuff and slamming the glass back down. “That is the fucking worst drink I’ve ever had. Pardon me,” he said to the individual next to him as an afterthought, whose drink he had probably just hijacked.

He turned round, but it was already too late.

Pavel came to a stop in front of him, a worried line between his brows and his eyes fixed on Bones’ forehead.

“Haven’t you ever seen a gray hair before,” Bones found himself growling after the jilted moment had expired. Pavel blinked, and his face relaxed into something more subdued as he lowered his gaze. He studied the rest of Bones’ face for a few seconds, people milling around them, conversations drifting by.

“It isn’t bad,” Pavel said carefully, referring to the quarter inch gray streak that was creeping along Bones’ hairline. The ‘eet eesn’t’ echoed through Bones’ skull like a church bell being rung. “It suits you,” he concluded.

They stared at each other and then Bones looked away in panic, trying to find anywhere else to set his eyes.

“Dammit, Pavel, quit looking at me like that,” he said, trying to keep the sudden urgency in his body maintained. He’d drank too fast and his pulse was too high. His palms were sweating; forty six and falling apart.

“I didn’t know how you were going to look,” Pavel said lowly and Bones finally mustered the courage to look at his face again. Pavel was looking just past him. His hand lifted and caught something beneath his eye for a split second.

“Look,” Bones breathed, but he had no idea what he was trying to say. “Just…”

“I’m alright,” Pavel said stiffly and then, like magic, his face changed, and he was. He sniffed. “I’m alright. It’s – ah, good. It’s good to see you looking well. At least…” he gave Bones another tentative once over, unconvinced.

“Well, I’m not going to start sobbing on the floor if that’s what you were expecting.”

“I am not here to torture you either!” Pavel snapped. “I wanted to say hello. I wanted to see this…” he waved his hand in the air in front of Bones’ face. “This gray hair, or something. See you. It’s been three years, Leonard. We needed to speak sometime…”

“You were pretty clear that you never wanted to speak to me again,” Bones replied, voice flat, and Pavel’s whole body seemed to tense and then deflate. He looked shyly at the people around him, avoiding Bones. His ears were red.

“I’m trying,” Pavel said, calmly, but his face was anything but. “I’m trying to be friendly with you.”

Bones stomach clenched like he had been punched.

“You don’t have to do that -,”

“Yes, I do,” Pavel interrupted, their attention back on each other. The words hung there between them, as if they had come out of Pavel’s mouth as full text.

“You look good,” Bones said, finally. Pavel’s face softened and  his shoulders lost their bristle. “You do,” he repeated, flicking his eyes from Pavel’s shoes to his face.

“Dirty old man,” Pavel hissed, glancing away, his cheeks going rosy. Bones smiled crookedly and then his face returned to its usual grave state.

“How’s that…Yaser.”

Pavel gave a reluctant smile.

“It’s good. He’s good...”

The unspoken “he is not like you” rattled between the words. From what Bones remembered he was a mild mannered, pleasant man. Definitely unlike him.

“A year and a half is pretty serious,” Bones mused, and Pavel shrugged.

“It speaks for itself.”

“Hmm.”

They lapsed into quiet. It was so difficult; the small talk and the pleasantries. The getting around and the catching up. Joanna was fine. She could always call more, but then again Bones had never set the best example about that.

The apartment was alright, though he always found something to bitch about, no trouble there. Pavel’s sabbatical was going well while he wrote his book. He couldn’t wait to get back into space. Jim offered him a position every other day, it seemed. He was trying to convince Yaser to go with him.

 They slipped into their old rhythm after a while, and it wasn’t as hard. It was nearly natural. 

Together, Pavel had never stopped talking; from the minute he walked in the door till they turned out the light he was talking, and Bones had never tired, and to his relief it hadn’t changed.

There was a soft chime as a voice announced that they would be proceeding to the ballroom for dinner in ten minutes. Even though it wasn’t torture, Bones wouldn’t pretend either of them hadn’t been keeping track of the time. He was sure Pavel was wondering the same thing; how long did it have to go on before they were allowed to let it go again. How long before the next time they had to do it.

“You lost Yaser,” Bones chuckled, looking around for him. Pavel looked at the ground.

“No, he’s…letting us speak,” he said softly and Bones considered that. Pavel rubbed his fingers together. Once, twice. People were beginning to filter slowly towards the ballroom, and soon they’d have to follow, but they lingered, nearly toe to toe with one another. The seconds ticked by, and it all felt as though they were being baited into saying something far more substantial.

Physically, Pavel had not changed so much. Little by little his face had matured and it continued. He was full grown, but there was still the honey colored curls, the thick lashes. The stuff of old renaissance paintings of angels. It was sickening how pretty he managed to be, even now. So wicked, the way he could make Bones feel the way he did just looking at him.

Bones had not really appreciated how much time three years was, but it seemed like so much more than it had the night before or while it was happening. Three years without really seeing him; or speaking to him? The moments he had woken and found he wasn’t there and thought he should get up out of bed -

Bones felt something reach into his chest and wrap around his heart and squeeze.

“Pav…” he started, and Pavel looked up again, fingers curling into a fist at his side. “Pasha,” Bones said again, so only he could hear. There was a twitch of something. He couldn’t tell; maybe it had been a wince, but maybe not that all. He didn’t know what exactly to be sorry for anymore. Maybe the arguments about children, about moving, or family. The things that had seemed so irreconcilable at the time, the problems that their entire relationship had hinged on, and he could barely remember why they had mattered. They had thought so little of each other, but now, he could only see how desperately they were attempting to do right, to be good.

It figured.

“I could have done something,” Bones said, knowing it was what he had been waiting to say for three years, and what Pavel had surely been waiting to hear.

“But you didn’t,” Pavel told him, matter-of-factly, and then without any warning he leaned up and kissed him. It was bittersweet, with a hand on either side of his neck, fingers just brushing against the hair above the back of his collar.

For Bones’ benefit, he was sure, because Bones was lonely. Bones did not have anyone. Bones got up in the middle of the night to search for what wasn’t there, and Pasha had only ever been a restless sleeper.

“I remember you told me it isn’t ever the same,” Pavel said after, Bones still in stunned silence. They were almost entirely alone, save for staff breaking down tables and a few stragglers neither of them knew. Pavel said it as though he was speaking to himself, his voice far away. “It really is never the same.” 

\--

It went off without a hitch.

Pavel delivered a very precise and beautiful piece about a seventeen year old who seemed entirely alien to his thirty two year old self. His fifteen years with star fleet has already been nearly half his life, and that number would only grow. His humble thanks to the people who had helped mold and shape his abilities. He only hoped that his achievements would do the same for other aspiring young minds; that his knowledge would be passed on to save and shelter and improve lives, just as his own predecessors had taught him to.

Bones sweated under the light during his brief speech about assuming his role of Chief Medical Officer in such an unsavory way, but that he had inherited the position from an exceptional man and even more exceptional doctor and had done his best to fill the shoes he’d been given. All of it was waterlogged with metaphor – but what else was he good for.

There had been a great deal of applause, but not nearly as much as what would come when Jim took the podium. Jim strung them on for a few minutes before he got to it, but it wouldn’t have been the same without the theatrics. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time he mentioned Pike, but Bones managed to hold out till the end, when he recalled the days when all of them were a little a green, a little stupid, a little strange.

Before the reputations and regulations and repercussions. That they had done the best with what they had been given; that he had never been prouder than when he was counted among those extraordinary and talented friends. That though they were assembled out of something tragic what they had achieved honored every soul with its bravery and its tenacity.

“It was one hell of an adventure,” Jim said.

Bones glanced across the stage to the other side where Pavel was in the wing, slightly in front of Sulu. His eyes were fixed on Bones as the rest of them clapped, staring at Jim. From far, he could have been the gangly eighteen year old asleep on the plastic chair in Bones’ office in the medbay, his PADD forgotten on his lap. He could have been twenty four, holding Bones’ hand tightly as they walked up the courthouse steps. Back to twenty two, touching earth for the first time in five years, embarking on a whole other journey with a rickety, prickly older man despite whatever good judgement existed.

Pasha, just barely touched with the white haze of the stage light, the shadows falling across him in a pattern Bones knew very well – a tender artifact of the great mysterious miracle that he had loved him at all, for as long as he did.

Something salvaged from all the wreckage. 


End file.
